


En Pointe

by Asynca



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Drabble, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-27 16:31:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7625860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asynca/pseuds/Asynca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Widowmaker's oxygen-starved brain returns to familiar memories to cope with her conditioning. Speed prompt, written in 18 minutes. Based on <a href="http://asynca.tumblr.com/post/148128466179/how-talon-created-widowmaker-a-medical">my theory that Widowmaker's cyanotic skin and slow heart are part of Talon's plan to keep her in a permanent state of clinical shock to prevent her from shaking off her conditioning. </a></p>
            </blockquote>





	En Pointe

She remembers what it was like to be breathless. What it was like to have _jetéd_ and _sisoned_ and _sautéd_ across the stage until she could barely draw breath fast enough. She could never stop, back then. She could never fall to her knees, clutching at her chest and panting; she must hold her _arabesque_ and smile at the audience, she must be _beautiful_. They must never guess that her legs are on the verge of collapsing underneath her.

It’s like that now on this skyscraper ledge, a hundred metres off the ground. Her muscles shake. She can’t feel her fingers. Her head spins as if she has freshly completed 100 _fouttés_ without spotting and can almost see herself falling… falling in a dead faint off this ledge and into her audience.

But she won’t. She knows this feeling well and she knows how to manage it. She has danced a thousand times feeling like she will faint but she never has. She balances on this ledge like she’s dancing _en pointe_ —beautifully, perfectly. She won’t fall.

“Everyone else will fall instead,” she hears herself whisper, lifting up the Widow’s Kiss and peering into the sight.

“Overwatch’s ship has landed,” a familiar voice reports through her earpiece. It sounds all at once in her head and yet a thousand miles away. “Are you ready to perform, Widowmaker?”

She scoffs. “What a question.” She can almost hear Tchaikovsky and feel the feathers on her tutu brushing against her cool skin.

She was _born_ for this role.


End file.
